For immediate release: November 21, 2016
CONTACT:
Rebecca Bailey, Publicity Coordinator/Writer
Hopkins Center for the Arts, Dartmouth College
603.646.3991
Twiling, flirting and spying: Hop presents US premiere of riveting new play about Cold War surveillance
Photos (from top): Béla Pintér, center, plays a folk dancer/dissident reluctantly introducing his son, right, and his girlfriend; the protagonist confesses to a therapist.
HANOVER, NH—At a time of Wiki leaks, Edward Snowden and ubiquitous security cameras, the Hop presents the US premiere of a fast-paced, tragicomic and riveting play examining the sinister surveillance culture of Cold War Hungary.
Our Secrets, by leading Hungarian theater director Béla Pintér and Company, is presented at the Hop Friday and Saturday, January 13 and 14, after which the show runs in Boston and New York City.The Hop engagement is the first stop in the company’s first US tour.
Boldly illustrating theater’s long tradition of challenging the powers that be, Our Secrets shines a light on the informant culture of Cold War Hungary, in which friends spied on friends.
The play is performed in Hungarian with English supertitles and is not meant for young viewers: it includes adult language and graphic sexual subject matter, such as pedophilia.
Two free events help set the context for this engagement. On Thursday, January 12, at 5 pm, in a panel discussion entitled “Secrets & Spies: Artists in the Eastern Bloc,” Pintér and several Dartmouth faculty members will discuss Central European culture under 20th-century communism, in 41 Haldeman Hall. On Friday, January 13, at 7 pm, a pre-show talk entitled “Welcome to Hungary” features Hungarian scholar Edit Nagy of the University of Florida’s Center for European Studies sharing the sociopolitical background of Our Secrets, in Faculty Lounge of the Hopkins Center.
Our Secrets takes us to 1980s Budapest, when people were rediscovering Hungary’s vibrant folk music and dances. In a dance hall, dancers swirl to tangy folk tunes played by an onstage band, belting out ribald lyrics. Then the music quiets and the scene shifts to a musician confessing to a dark desire. Unbeknownst to him, his government is taping his every word, and will use them to destroy individuals and lifelong friendships.
This drama unfolds between vignettes of dancing and daily life in Cold War-era Hungary. Wearing print shirts, faux peasant skirts, BeeGees hair and other 1980s Eastern Bloc finery, cast members sing and play instruments and multiple characters. Behind them, a huge retro tape reel slowly turns—a reminder of the government’s constant spying on its citizens. . And, as the play points out in a coda, no Hungarian government since the end of Communist rule, either left- or right-wing, has made public the list of those who informed to Hungary’s secret police—unlike Germany, for instance, where Stasi files were opened to the public soon after Unification.
Wrote American Theatre Magazine, Our Secrets is a “wonderfully acted, beautifully staged play [that] proved hilarious and horrifying by turns—and fast turns at that, pivoting around its theme of corrupted lives with the effortless precision of a film by Pedro Almodóvar.”
Wrote The Herald, Scotland, “Imagine Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's superb 2006 film The Lives Of Others (which explores the oppressive surveillance by the Stasi in the old East Germany) crossed with the stinging wit of Oscar Wilde and the tense interpersonal relations of Harold Pinter…Cleverly written and brilliantly acted…the play ends with a sharply satirical dig at Hungary's current, deeply compromised capitalist democracy.”
Pintér is a 46-year-old playwright/director/performer celebrated for his ability to combine biting social critiques with captivating theater, often laden with farce as well as Hungarian folk music and dance. At a time when Hungary’s rightwing government led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has greatly restricted the country’s funding for independent theater, and has installed political operatives at the helm of important arts organizations, Pintér and his company “currently represent the most financially and critically successful model of an independent theater at work in Hungary and abroad today…utterly fresh, urgent and devilishly intelligent,”,” writes American Theatre.
Founded in 1998 by Pintér, the company aims “to create contemporary productions based on critical-ironic observations of society and themselves. The surreal world which generally characterizes their productions is constructed from a combination of reality and dream, of authentic and kitsch, and from sundry elements of Hungarian culture.”
Download Word.doc press release and high-resolution photos
CALENDAR LISTINGS
Our Secrets by Béla Pintér and Company
Hungary’s leading theater director offers potent, biting insight into a specific absurdity of early ‘80s Communist Hungary: the secret police’s infiltration of amateur folk dancing. A musician confesses unspeakable sexual desires—unaware his government is taping every word. In between the playwright’s pointed political jokes, pressure builds, until seeping distrust compels lifelong friends to inform on each other, poisoning even the innocent desire to flirt, stomp and twirl.In Hungarian with English supertitles. Adult language, graphic sexual content.
Friday & Saturday, January 13& 14, 8 pm
The Moore Theater, Hopkins Center, Hanover NH
$25-35, Dartmouth students $10
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2422
Panel—Secrets & Spies: Artists in the Eastern Bloc
Pintér joins faculty to discuss German, Hungarian and Russian culture under 20th century Communism. Cosponsored by the Dickey Center for International Understanding..
Thursday, January 12, 5 pm
41 Haldeman Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH
Free
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2010
Pre-Show Talk—Welcome to Hungary
Hungarian scholar Edit Nagy shares the sociopolitical background of Our Secrets.
Friday, January 13, 7 pm
Faculty Lounge, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Hanover NH
Free
Information: hop.dartmouth.edu or 603.646.2010
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Founded in 1962, the Hopkins Center for the Arts is a multi-disciplinary academic, visual and performing arts center dedicated to uncovering insights, igniting passions, and nurturing talents to help Dartmouth and the surrounding Upper Valley community engage imaginatively and contribute creatively to our world. Each year the Hop presents more than 300 live events and films by visiting artists as well as Dartmouth students and the Dartmouth community, and reaches more than 22,000 Upper Valley residents and students with outreach and arts education programs. After a celebratory 50th-anniversary season in 2012-13, the Hop enters its second half-century with renewed passion for mentoring young artists, supporting the development of new work, and providing a laboratory for participation and experimentation in the arts.